Awards are bullshit

If this post comes across as jealousy. Honestly, nothing could be further from the truth.

In the digital space there’s no shortage of them. Name a field of specialism, and you can bet there will be an award for it. Blog awards, SEO awards, design awards, startup awards.

They are all bullshit.

If you are doing great work. You are doing great work. Period.

You’ll know because you’ve attracted an audience. You’ll know because your peers have told you so. You’ll know because your customers are happy. You’ll know because your employees are happy. You’ll know because your balance sheet at the end of the month is healthy.

Not because some company decides to place you on a pedestal and certainly not because some d-list celebrity hands you a silver gong cheap aluminium paperweight.

There’s something fundamentally wrong with winning something yet having to pay for tickets to enter, or having awards sponsored or hosted by some company that knows so little about your industry that they have to bring in independent judges to gain any credibility. Half of them are filled to the brim with cronyism and corruption, and the other half are ran for the sole purpose of profiteering off the entrants.

Any awards I’ve seen are full of selfish motives for the company that hosts, turning the nominees into another cog in their elaborate PR machine.

If you’ve seen a badge or a tweet from someone on your travels around the web (telling you they’ve been nominated or shortlisted), well, that’ll be the PR bullshit machine in full motion.

Award ceremonies don’t actually mean anything, or have any substance.

The real winners in business aren’t the people you see winning or entering awards for short term boosts in popularity. It’s the people quietly working their arse off, keeping their head down and killing it.